Where does your health insurance come from? If you’re an American, odds are you get it through your employer. But that’s a relatively unique circumstance compared to the rest of the world. Why are Americans so much more likely to be insured through their employers? And is this a good way to insure people’s health? In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomed Niskanen Center economist Ed Dolan to try to answer these questions.
Dolan argues employer-sponsored insurance is not effective. What are the negative effects of employer-sponsored insurance as Dolan sees them? Is the main problem one with health insurance or health care?
1- Dolan suggest that the problem of third-party payment is not unique to employer-sponsored insurance. What does he mean by that? To what extent does Dolan favor a single-payer scheme? (OK… that last one’s kind of a trick question…)
2- Why don’t employers have a greater incentive to monitor their employees’ health insurance providers to ensure they’re covering services of value? How might the system be made more incentive compatible?
3- What is the problem of “job lock,” and to what extent do you think this puts a damper on the American economy? On human flourishing?
4- Dolan suggests that an effective health care system might not be entirely market-based. To what extent is it possible to have a market-based health care system, according to Dolan? Which parts of health care are markets not best able to handle?
5- What is universal catastrophic coverage, and how do Dolan and Roberts think it might replace the current scheme of employer-sponsored health insurance? To what extent are you convinced this would be a good solution? Explain.
READER COMMENTS
Rahul Phatak
Feb 3 2019 at 9:52am
Good morning,
I am a physician in St. Louis, and also did my MBA from 2001-2004 at Olin.
I was introduced to your podcast about 2 years ago, and enjoy them when I can.
My specific question is based on an observation that many, not all health issues we see are completely avoidable with proper health maintenance. Ie, eat well and exercise. I know some cities have intruded taxes that have help curb rates such as diabetes.
It seems that one of the largely avoidable costs in health care comes from lack of personal responsibility.
Has anything been studied that shows that healthcare costs lower if early healthy incentive alignment exists? Ie, things such as taxes on “junk food,” gym membership deductions, etc?
Thank you,
Rahul